


Officially || Unofficially

by Hexx



Category: Iron Fist (TV), Jessica Jones (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Past Child Abuse, Post-Defenders, Pre-Relationship, The full cast is sorta there in the background, pre-jessica jones s2, they have a lot in common
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-29 15:40:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13930146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hexx/pseuds/Hexx
Summary: Officially, Ward and Trish run in the same circles. Unofficially, they are total strangers.Officially, Trish does a lot of people watching. Unofficially, she watches Ward the most.aka How Trish Walker finally got around to making friends with the man she'd been staring at since she started going to charity events.





	Officially || Unofficially

**Author's Note:**

> I started this right after I watched Defenders and then forgot about it until I realized season 2 of Jessica Jones was coming out. So I wanted to get this posted before I watched s2* and had all my hopes about Trish and Ward meeting dashed against the angsty rocks of Jessica Jones's life. 
> 
> I'm not under any impression that this is good, it's just what I wanted. So here you go, have my really self indulgent but kinda all over the place fic about my two favorite semi-functioning adults with super hero 'siblings'
> 
> *written prior to me knowing that Trish was 10 years sober, including alcohol

Officially, Trish Walker had met Ward Meachum three times. All of them at high profile functions:  two fundraisers and a fine arts gala at the Met. All three of those times, he had been the brooding yet politely smiling shadow on his sister’s heels. Joy was a grinning, friendly but calculating woman who presented such an open and honest feeling face for Rand Enterprises. Trish remembered Joy a lot more then she remembered Ward.  

After all, if she was honest, she didn’t think they had ever spoken more than a perfunctory greeting. A ‘hello there, how are you’ followed by ‘fine Miss. Walker, thank you’ that would open the floor for Joy to monopolize the conversation. If Ward minded not getting to speak with her, Trish hadn’t noticed. Though she had noticed that Ward rarely spoke to anyone by choice.  Besides Joy, that is. Trish had noted at the fine arts gala how animated and bright Ward Meachum looked when talking with his sister beside a sculpture that neither of them were really looking at. She caught the sound of his sudden, boisterous laugh at something Joy had said and couldn’t help but look fondly upon the pair. She had a soft spot for siblings, the image of Jessica and herself at a younger age flickering through her thoughts.

But then a pair of gentleman asked to speak with Ward and he had sobered  so quickly and in such a way that it made Trish go a little cold. Whatever warm and happy thing she had just glimpsed in Ward was gone, shut away in favor of the cocky man before her, doing business with a smirking grin and a few well-placed undercutting comments. If Joy noticed the way her brother had closed up she was either remarkably good at hiding it or she didn’t care. Either way she chimed into his conversation with the men as unaffected as she ever was, laugh like silver bells and an innocent head tilt that hid the ambitious snake coiled in her spine.

Unofficially, Trish spent a lot of times at the same events Ward did, even if their only interaction was her stealing glances at him and trying to figure out how the Meachum siblings could be so outwardly different. He spent an awful lot of time shooting brooding looks into security cameras, she noticed.

Officially, Trish had a healthy relationship with the Meachum family. That meant having Joy on Trish Talk every time Rand started a new project that would be affecting large numbers of the residents of New York City. It meant wrapping her arm around Joy’s waist during a photo op at a children’s charity where they were both helping hand out school supplies. It meant seeing Joy as this bright light and voice of compassion in the heartless corporate landscape, a do-gooder with the means to follow through, even if she did have very calculating eyes and a manipulative tone sometimes. It meant building an image of Ward as a cocky, workaholic, privileged know-it-all who wasn’t interested in helping anyone but himself.

Unofficially, Trish was very wary of the Meachum siblings. They are corporate from birth and their blood is imbedded in Rand. They were born into a world that Trish had to fight her way into and sometimes she felt like they judged her for it. She mentions it to Jessica in a moment of off-handed frustration at the disgustingly polite way Ward had declined her offer to join Joy on next week’s Trish Talk in his email and slaps some unpleasant CEO stereotypes on him. Remarks about how normal Joy is compared to her brother, which earns her a sharp bark of laughter from Jessica.

“Joy Meachum is about as blood thirsty as it comes Trish, you know she has been paying me on and off to dig up dirt on members of the Rand board for like…over a year or some shit?”

Trish was taken aback, blinking in surprise at her sister. “Are you sure it was Joy, and not Ward? I know Joy is ambitious and dedicated to Rand and all but blackmail just doesn’t seem like her.”

“I do my hand offs in person, Trish. I think I can tell the difference between the two. One is short and cute and the other is tall and brooding in that frustrating way that you like.”

“I don’t know what you mean” Trish says breezily, and thankfully Jessica doesn’t comment. “But surely you’re not going to tell me Ward is some kind of a saint.”

Jessica had gotten a funny look on her face, staring into the bottom of her drinking glass. Trish almost asked if something was wrong before Jessica said “Ward Meachum is hiding something weird, something I haven’t bothered to investigate because honestly nobody is paying me to. And because I think he is guarding that secret too well. If I even tried, he’d know. It’s not a secret he wants to hide…he has to hide it.” Jessica makes another face and finishes her drink. “It’s more like a burden and whatever is burdening a man like Ward Meachum, I don’t want burdening me. But as for Ward himself, he drinks a lot and takes a lot of prescription pills he doesn’t need and I’m pretty sure he thinks about what it would be like to toss himself out his office window almost every day. So he’s probably an alright guy, deep down under his stuck up rich boy gig.”

Trish just stares at her dark haired sister, who is pretending to contemplate getting another drink or not. Trish and Jessica both know that of course Jessica will have another. “What makes you say that, after what you just described?” She asks finally.

Jessica shrugs again, slouching back on the couch and reaching for the liquor bottle. “I can relate, to a degree. So if I’m an alright human being despite objectively being a piece of trash 86% of the time, then Ward is probably alright too.” She lolls her head back and cracks a lopsided grin to try and defuse the morbidity of the moment. “Besides, he’d kill for his sister, he loves her that much. I know you find some merit in that.”

Trish had nodded and let the subject drop, compartmentalizing the new information about Joy and Ward to consider later. Of course Joy was ambitious behind her smiling persona, and of course under the hard exterior Ward had soft parts. But none of this new information when meshed with the old information made Trish any less wary of the Meachum siblings as a whole. Because at the end of the day they were a combination of old money and corporate savvy and Trish really didn’t want to get involved in either of those things.

* * *

 

Unofficially, Trish found Ward Meachum to be devastatingly handsome.

But Trish wasn’t someone who compromised her morals for a handsome face, she had made mistakes like that before. Every person she finds attractive is tainted by the memory of Simpson, has her looking for signs of him in all men, trying to root out the dangerous ones by staying away from anything that was similar to the madman. And there was nothing in Ward’s appearance that reminded her of Simpson besides a strong jaw and an impressive height but there was the secret that Jessica was afraid of and Trish had always been afraid of Simpson’s secrets.  So she stayed friendly with Joy, and kept an eye out for Ward at events, but she never went looking for anything. Which she decided must have been the right choice, because then Danny Rand came back from the dead and as far as Trish could tell everything with that family went to shit and had nearly crumbled down around them.  But when the dust had cleared there was Danny, and there was Ward and no Joy to be found. And as far as Trish was concerned that was more than enough reason to stay away from the whole lot of them.

Until of course, Jessica crossed paths with Danny Rand.

Standing in the police station, arms wrapped around herself, Trish took in the wall of photos that Detective Knight had compiled. Malcom was standing beside her, but he was more invested in studying the number of grinds that had managed to make it from the coffee pot to the inside of his flimsy disposable cup. Her eyes skipped neatly over most of it, Jessica it seems hadn’t really had much to do with the Hand until very, very recently. None of it looked familiar to her. Footsteps in the hall caused her to turn, expecting to see another detective. Instead, in strode Ward Meachum. Impeccably dressed in a well-made suit, looking healthier and more relaxed then Trish had ever seen him, in person or otherwise, though he did look extremely exasperated.

He paused just inside the door of the room, taking a quick look around. His eyes skipped over Trish without any lingering recognition or curiosity as to her presence, though she couldn’t take it personally considering that was how he was looking at all of them. At least, until his eyes settled on the young Asian woman who had been fiddling with a sword and brooding since her bleeding had stopped. He walked right over to her, stopping abruptly a foot away and letting the woman survey him with thinly veiled disinterest.

“Well, you see me. Tell him I was here. I left my business meeting to hustle over here via helicopter just to prove that sometimes I do listen to Danny when he asks me to do things.” Ward said, before giving her a polite yet short nod. He adjusted his suit jacket, and Trish realized he was uncomfortable with everyone in the room looking at him, even if he wasn’t showing it in his face. Trish knew that trick, she wasn’t surprised Ward knew it too. “Alright, I’m going back.” He said, turning back towards the door as he said it.

That got a reaction from the woman, who suddenly sprung away from the desk she was leaning against as she latched her fingers into his suit jacket at the elbow.

“Wait, you can’t go! You have to stay here where it’s safe-“

“I have a company to run, a company I have to run by myself because Danny is out being Danny and Joy is-“ Whatever it was that Ward was about to say was chocked into silence as his jaw clenched, the muscle of his cheek twitching visibly. He looked down at her hand, and then ever so gently pried it off. When he spoke, his tone was low and private, but unfortunately for him the room was dead silent. But he still went on, pretending nobody was listening, “Colleen at this point if they want me they can have me, but I think after watching me for the last thirteen years they have decided I am not a threat.”

Trish had never heard such a pained and genuinely self-deprecating tone in her life, and she talked to people for a living. The fact that every scrap of being that made up Ward believed that he wasn’t even worth murdering to get to Danny Rand, when he was as far as Trish could understand the last semblance of family that the Iron Fist had, was surprisingly heartbreaking.

“Ward, this isn’t about what your father-“ The woman, Colleen, paused and then started again “This isn’t about what happened before. What you did or didn’t do to the Hand. This is about who you are to Danny. They’ll hurt you just to get to him.”

And Ward chuckled at that, patting her hand before dropping it entirely. For a moment Trish saw him look at Colleen the way she had seen him look at Joy. But then the cocky attitude was slipping into place, a seamless mask that had no cracks upon its surface. “You’re worth six of me, Colleen. I am eclipsed into safety simply because he cares about you so much.” The flush on Colleen’s face is enough to make her companion, the woman who had patched her up earlier, crack a sentimental smile.

Ward Meachum finally glances around the room at them all again, and everyone has the decency to at least look ashamed at having listened in. Everyone that is, except Trish who was still studying Ward as if she could puzzle out who he really was underneath his public front. He looked her right in the eye, one eyebrow raised before turning to the door again.

“You people all sit tight and be safe or whatever, and if Danny asks, I was here the whole time.”

It’s almost four months later that Trish sees him again. It’s at a fundraiser of course, raising money to cover the now razed lot where Midland Circle once stood with a park. Officially, Rand Enterprises is the primary lead on the project, and Danny is among the crowd doing his level best to appear normal. Unofficially, Iron Fist is hoping for public approval to bury whatever monster the Defenders had found down there for good. To further insure that the final resting place of the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen goes undisturbed. Ward stands near a wall with his hands in his pockets looking like stone, reanimating only when someone decides to engage with him. Brief and polite conversations that appear stilted in Trish’s eyes, seeing how they last no longer than five minutes. Always ending with a polite but rehearsed laugh and a handshake before he settled back into himself again.

“Miss Walker.” He says, not in an unfriendly way, when she approaches him. He eyes the drink in her hand before his gaze sweeps over her appearance and Trish wonders if he realizes just how many secrets his body language is telling her.  But then again, if she hadn’t spent so much time with Malcom she wouldn’t know what the signs of recovery looked like in other people.

“Mr. Meachum.” She replies, standing beside him rather than in front of him so she could take in the room.  They fall into silence, though she sees him smile a small close lipped grin before ducking his head towards the ground and taking a deep breath through his nose. When he stands at his full height again he is once again the face of indifference. Trish is distracted from discreetly admiring his jawline by his façade.

“Why do you do that?” She hears herself asking before she can help it, cringing against the look of suspicion it earns her. Her fingers tighten around the wine glass but she forces them to relax.

“I’m not sure what you mean.” He supplies in a low tone, the undercurrent she heard there sending warning bells tripping down her spine. But Trish is over being intimidated by men in well-made suits. Or men with strong jawlines.

“Oh come on Meachum,” She scoffed, angling her body slightly towards him. He reciprocated the movement just enough so that they could give one another a more calculated once over. “Don’t you get cold hiding behind that wall of ice?”

Both of Ward’s eyebrows shot up, though he still glowered at her. He graced her with a sharp smile that was all teeth clenched tightly together. “I thought all that prose talk was scripted for your little radio show, color me surprised to hear you are just as obnoxiously metaphorical in person.”

Trish couldn’t be sure if it was the look in his eye or the sight of all his teeth or the implication that he listened to her radio show that sent a dangerous thrill down her spine. This was the kind of combative attitude she didn’t experience much anymore. Sure people insulted Trish all the time, she was a woman in the entertainment industry after all. But Ward wasn’t insulting her to shut her down or drive her away, at least not entirely. No, Trish recognized this pattern from all her years dealing with Jessica’s moods. This was a test, shrapnel in the road, to see just how far Trish was willing to go to get closer to the person behind the defenses.

She stepped over his insult like it was a scrap of barbed wire. “Doesn’t change the fact that this is your party and you’re over here avoiding well…everyone.” Trish tilted her head, aware of the way her hair trailed back off her shoulder to hang down her back. Caught the way his eyes tracked the movement with a confident smile. Despite his dismissive speeches, Trish had his full attention. 

“It’s not my party Miss. Walker, you know that just as well as I do.” He gave a subtle gesture with his head and she followed the movement, saw Jessica twisting her face into the same fake smile she used when imitating overly perky Midwestern teenagers on the phone. Colleen and Claire were standing close by, looking like they were about to spring in at any moment if Jessica’s apparent attempts at coaxing money from a red headed woman in a stunning white suit went south.

“Noted.” Trish said, turning to look back up at him. He was just tall enough that even in her heels she had to tilt her head back to look him in the eye. “But you’re avoiding the point of my first question.”

His face darkened and all amusement fell away from his tone. He wasn’t even pretending now. ‘Good’, Trish thought. ‘Don’t pretend, show me the truth.’

“Maybe this isn’t my idea of fun, Patsy.” He spat with more venom then Trish had heard injected into the name when spoken by someone other than herself. “Maybe I don’t actually enjoy talking to people about the fucking weather and the traffic in this god damn city.” His upper lip pulled away from his teeth again as he sneered at her. “Maybe I’m really just this cold and it’s not a wall of ice I’m hiding behind, it’s just my face.”  
Trish raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips to avoid from snapping at him for calling her Patsy. It was a good trap he’d laid out at her feet. A trench full of shrapnel that would tear her to shreds if she engaged in the argument he was setting up for them. It was brutal and raw but so entirely predictable that it actually made her sad. She took a sip of her wine, watched his shoulders relax into a curious slouch as he waited for her to respond. Or leave.

Instead she said, “If one more person complains to me about how many bicyclists are in this city I will probably lose it.”

Again Ward’s eyebrows shoot upwards and he looks her over again like maybe he missed something. He turns away from her to look at the room again. Trish says nothing, just sips her wine and waits.

“When you inherit a company at 18 and essentially become a single father at the same time, you learn how to hide your discomfort pretty early on.” Comes the soft, almost mumbled reply. Trish looks at him out of the corner of her eye, sees the way he has clenched his jaw.

‘See,’ she thinks. ‘Was that so hard?’ But what Trish says instead is: “You’re hiding more than just your discomfort.”

He gives her a sideways look and Trish thinks he might be smiling, or something close to a smile that isn’t a smirk. “Don’t pretend you don’t know all about playing the role other people picked out for you.”

Trish thinks of her mother and the things that were ‘good for her career’. Of Simpson and him trapping in her panic room for her ‘own good’. Of Kilgrave and the moments on the pier. Thinks about every battle she had to fight to get out from under every shred of it. Thinks about the shreds that have still managed to cling to her edges. “Okay.”

“Okay.” Ward replies, and Trish is pleased to see all the visible tension has drained out of him. They stand in silence for another few moments before finally he says, with what sounds like a laugh building in his throat, “You might want to help Miss. Jones before Miss. Potts realizes she’s the same Jessica Jones who punched out Mr. Stark’s windshield once delivering a summons to his former secretary.”

“Oh no.” Trish says, shaking her head and laughing. “She should have known better than to start talking to her in the first place. But you might want to stop Danny and Mr. Stark from whatever they’re whispering about over there.” She nodded towards the high windows across the room where Danny was very interested in whatever animated story Tony Stark was telling. Both men’s hands going to their ties and the buttons on their shirts in what could only be an act of ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours’.

“You know what.” Ward said after considering it. “I’m fine right here.”

“Good.” Trish said, looping her arm through his as if he was an old friend. “Now smile and laugh so Councilman Hodge doesn’t try to talk me about coming onto the show to talk about his reelection campaign, again.”

* * *

 “You watched my show?” She asked with a snort, trying to imagine a Ward young and carefree enough to enjoy a tv show. “What a tragedy.”

  
“Joy watched your show.” He said by way of explanation, though his tone didn’t sound defensive. He looked up at her over his computer screen. “Cohabitation means I may have been present on occasion when your show was on.” He looked down at the computer again, the noise of his typing filling up the room again.

Trish tried her best not to laugh, or to let out a blustering sigh. When he isn’t looking she casts a glance at the door that adjoined his office to the one beside it. Joy’s, untouched since she took her ‘sabbatical’ from Rand. Danny and Ward had been less than forthcoming with all of the details of her departure from the company, but it was clear to see that Ward missed Joy dearly. Trish twisted her head to look behind her and through Ward’s open door into the hall. Still no sign of Jessica, whatever business she had today with Danny was taking an awful lot of time.

Jessica refused to take money from Danny when he offered to help her with rent, and they had had a particularly violent fight over it. But then Danny, by the grace of Colleen’s quick thinking, revised the offer. He would pay Jessica to do the majority of the leg work required for tying up the rest of the loose ends left behind from the Hand. And digging up additional information on people who were apparently part of Danny’s newest crusade. Jessica had bitched to Trish for well over two hours about how it was a bullshit arrangement, but bills were bills so she accepted anyway.

“We were supposed to be having lunch today” Trish complained after what felt like a good ten minutes or so. Though judging by the way Ward closed his eyes tightly against her words before looking up at her it was probably shorter than that. “What are they even working on this week, do you know? Jessica wouldn’t tell me.”

That seemed to surprise Ward. “I thought she told you everything,”

Trish barks out a laugh dripping with shock. “Oh I wish, no half the time she tells me things only because I can guilt them out of her. Or because I figure out a percent of what is going on and she fills me in to keep me from doing more digging around.” She slouched in her seat, his furniture was fashionable but not particularly comfortable, and shook her head. “No she’s using client confidentiality as her excuse to keep all this from me. She doesn’t want me involved.” Trish knew she was sulking and normally she would be mortified to do so but she was hangry at this point.

“She’s trying to protect you, keep you from playing detective.” Ward supplied. And it was only because of the soft sort of lost in thought way he said it, like he was thinking about something or someone else that had Trish biting her tongue.

In the weeks since she had forcibly inserted herself into Ward Meachum’s life, she had learned so much and still so little. But she knew now that the secret that Jessica had told her about was the kind that lingered and haunted. Trish told Ward about the bruises on the back of her neck from her mother holding her head over the toilet, and Ward described the way your rib feels when it cracks from the force your father uses to hit you. Trish tells him about how she had Jessica to protect her and Ward smiles uneasily and says better him then Joy.

Trish gets up from her seat and walks past his desk to look at the view. Hears the swivel of his seat to look at her. “If you’re really that hungry, we have a cafeteria downstairs.” And Trish can’t help the smile that pulls across her face.

* * *

 

“I killed him.” Ward says matter of factly. Trish halts as she crosses the hall from the elevator towards her apartment door. “Twice, actually.”

She turns, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “Killed who?”

“My father.” Ward explains, hands in his pockets. “I assume Jessica told you about him not being dead for those thirteen years.”

Trish couldn’t even pretend that Jessica hadn’t mentioned it. She’d complained at length to the utter headache that was Danny’s history lesson of the Hand’s activities in New York City. Had mentioned that Harold Meachum had been the one living in that penthouse she’d followed Ward to that one day with the kind of throw away attitude as if she was describing some lack luster take out.

“I can’t say I blame you.” Trish said, turning away from him to unlock her doors. She could feel him studying her. She did her best not to shiver under the intensity of his stare.

“Can I tell you about it?” He asked, following her into her home. He stood just over the threshold, looking at her security modifications.

“About killing your dad?” She asked, unable to help the slight horror in her tone. He cracked a lopsided, sardonic smile at her.

“No, about everything else. About…about living with him.” He shrugged. “I don’t really have a therapist I can tell all of this stuff too and…I think if I don’t tell someone who’ll understand I might go crazy.” He tried to sound calm, but she heard the edge of hysteria fighting its way into his voice. “I feel like he’s still inside of me, like I still can’t be free of him because I am still keeping him a secret. Please, Trish. “

There was no way Trish could have refused him. Not when she knew how hiding the abuse from the world ate the victim alive from the inside out. Not after she poked and prodded him into opening up as a person. So she sat him down on her couch, took his shaking hand in her own, and listened.

Trish thought about the abuse he had described, thought about the fact that he had to hide every feeling he ever had not only in public, but also in private so his father couldn’t see it through his hidden cameras and use it against him later. How few choices Ward had ever gotten to really make for himself. How everything he did, he did for Joy and in the end she had chosen their father, Ward’s abuser over Ward himself.

“I know murder is bad and all.” He says at the end, tears dried on his cheeks but voice still watery as he tries to laugh it off. “But I can’t help but feel like it was justified. Considering he cheated death in the first place.”

Trish hugged him and tried not to notice just how hard he dug his fingers into her shoulder blades.

“I was strangled on the floor right over there by a man mind controlled into killing me.” She says softly, thinking about Simpson and the gun he gave her sitting in her purse on the end table. “And much later, after I let him try to redeem himself, he killed two men in my hallway and locked me in my panic room before he went to try and kill Jessica.” She felt him shift like he was going to draw away from her, probably to look at her, so she held on tighter to stop him until she was done. “I think I killed him, we don’t know because some government spooks took his body while Jess was rushing me to the hospital. But I think I beat him to death, and I feel like that was justified too.”

Ward makes to pull away again and Trish lets him. He looks like he feels much better, despite the haunted look that lingers in his expression. Trish knows it from looking at Jessica when she talks about her time with Kilgrave. It helps to say it, apparently, but saying it means reliving it too.

“I feel like there is a lot to that story I’m missing.” Ward says, trying to smile. She lets out a breathy laugh and goes to make them a cup of coffee before she begins.

* * *

 

“Are you going to the Children’s Hospital Holiday party?” Trish asks, phone between her ear and her shoulder as she sliced vegetables for her salad.

“Unless I can figure a way out of it,” Ward replied, probably still at the office considering the background noise she was hearing. “If I can keep Danny and Colleen from running off to whatever new Hand off-shoot base they have found this month I might make them go as Rand’s representation so I won’t have to. I hate the pandering.”

“It is a lot of rich people doing their yearly charity and thinking of themselves as better people then they really are, I know.” Trish said, popping a cherry tomato into her mouth. “But, it is for a good cause.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t a good cause, I just hate the party.” Ward protests. Then he pauses and takes up a suspicious tone. “Why?”

Trish rolls her eyes, can practically feel the way he narrows his eyes at her through the phone. “Because the invitation says to bring a date and if we went together then we could better coordinate a plausible excuse to leave early.”

He snorts on the other end of the line. “You’re going to make the tabloids talk Miss. Walker, you haven’t taken a date to a fundraiser in years.”

“I actually have taken dates, thank you very much. But the tabloids just report them to be my ‘good friends’.”

“Ahh yes, Joy did mention that to me once.” Ward said distractedly. “Your bisexuality was quite the stir for all of twenty minutes before it was forgotten.”

“Apparently I am too pretty to date women.” Trish said sourly. Ward just chuckled at her good naturedly. “I could always ask Karen Page if you don’t want to go, I bet it would make her night to be in a room with all those high profile types. Lots of people to interview for the paper.”

“You should be taking Claire, help talk her up some. I recently submitted a letter of reference to the Children’s Hospital about her. She could probably use the additional endorsement.”

“Wow.” Trish said, taking a mock offensive tone. “You just really don’t want to go with me, huh?”

“I didn’t say that.” Ward said, voice soft and warm in a way that made Trish flush.

In the end, Danny ends up taking Colleen, Ward takes Claire and Trish takes Luke. Jessica stays home with Malcom and Foggy who complains loudly about being left out. If Claire and Luke end up leaving hand in hand after Ward and Trish passive aggressively secure the Night Nurse an interview with the director, nobody at the party really notices. And if Trish ends up listening to Ward describe the architectural history of the building for the majority of the night, nobody really notices that either.

They do notice Danny Rand scaling the locked gates to visit some patients through the ballroom’s windows, but in the end that publicity ends up being pretty positive. So Ward doesn’t complain about it.

* * *

 

“It’s strange being in a position like this. I am almost unblackmailable. For the first time ever.” Ward seemed rather pleased with himself, and Trish couldn’t help but snort at him.

They were sitting at a semi-private booth at Harlem’s Paradise trying to appear perfectly casual. It was going pretty decently, given nobody had really bothered them other than their waitress and one particularly eager woman asking for Trish’s picture. Danny and Colleen were there too, of course. Though they were mingling on the dance floor near the stage. Colleen was attempting to teach Danny how to dance, something he was surprisingly bad at considering how much muscle control he had over his body. Apparently being good at martial arts did not translate into being able to sway with rhythm in any capacity.

But it was all for the best, since the four of them were sufficiently distracting Mariah and her men while Jessica and Luke turned a warehouse full of smuggled guns upside down across town. Every time Danny nearly stepped on Colleen, Trish could see Mariah and Shades in the reflection of her glass watching them. Trish and Danny (and Ward) had attracted a minor gathering of paparazzi outside. There was no way for the criminal pair to slip away without being noticed. Which left Luke and Jessica free to do what needed to be done. And considering the free publicity the four of them being in the club was generating apparently outweighed whatever connection between them and Luke Cage she might be aware of, Mariah wasn’t fabricating an excuse to throw them out. If she was even aware that there was one.

“Please.” Trish scoffs, glad she doesn’t slur around the S. She has only had a drink and a half, still nursing her second one in both hands but the bartender had made them particularly strong. Stronger then she is used to at least. Officially, Trish Walker is a woman of the people, a lifestyle talk show host with her pulse on New York City’s nightlife. Unofficially Trish hasn’t gone bar hopping since before Kilgrave and really only drinks in public at fundraisers that offer cheap red wine. Which she sips.  “Everyone has some kind of price Ward, maybe you’re not blackmailable but you are buyable.”

He doesn’t take offense to her statement, either by virtue of seeing her tipsy or because he understands the teasing way Jessica and Trish talk to one another. Doesn’t mind having Trish talk to him like that. But his eyes darken in a way that thrills her to her core. “Does that mean you can be bought too, Miss. Walker?”

The mocking business like lilt to his voice earns him a companionable laugh. He seems pleased to have earned it. “Of course I can. I’m not so naïve as to think there aren’t some things I would do anything for.”

“Like Jessica.” Ward supplies, not bothering to beat around the bush. Not dragging it out or toying with her sensibilities as a charitable woman.

“Exactly.” She beams, taking another drink of her cocktail before wincing at the harsh alcohol taste. “God, did he even put any juice in this thing? It’s like nail varnish.” Ward laughs at her even as he pushes his glass of water over. She takes a drink, pulling a chunk of ice into her mouth with her tongue and letting it rest there. It numbs the entire inside, a jarring sensation against the humidity she feels against her skin.

“What could anyone offer me at this point in my life to get a favor? Money isn’t an object, Joy isn’t around to hold against me and the day someone can hold Danny still long enough to make a hostage out of him wouldn’t actually even need me for anything.” Ward tipped his head back, tall as he was it was above the back of the booth seat and rested neatly against the tile wall. Trish imagined it was cooler than the vinyl where her own head was resting, hair bunched up behind it and sticking to the sweat on her neck. “They can’t even use my past against me because at this point the whole thing sounds so insane that I don’t even think a potential blackmailer would believe it.”

She shrugged at him, taking a contemplative sip of her drink. “Good point, I guess you’re untouchable.” She let Ward look smug for a moment before she grinned at him, all teeth and tone casual “I’d have to go with sexual favors then.”

The laughter he barked out coupled with the genuine look of surprise on his face warmed Trish more than the heat of the club and the alcohol combined. It slid deep under her skin straight to her heart and made her _want_.

“What could Trish Walker possibly want from a man like me that she would offer up sexual favors in return?” He asked, voice coated in a laugh. The expression he wore took years off his appearance, and Trish found she liked it immensely.

She set her glass down on the table and leaned forward to shrug at him, her mouth turned slightly down as if she was musing over his question. She wasn’t really, because she already had an answer to it.

“Sexual favors, obviously.”

She cut her eyes up across the table to look at him, keeping her expression as neutral as she possibly could while alcohol and nerves jumped at every synapse. It had been a long time since she’d propositioned anyone, longer still since she had to worry about the possibility of rejection. Trish didn’t like to seem vain but she wasn’t stupid either. She knew her appearance and her status and her wealth factored into getting her way sometimes when it came to partners, particularly on a one night stand basis. But this was the first time she’d asked someone whose status surpassed her in a way that she wasn’t accustomed to.

And, unofficially of course, Trish wasn’t angling for just a one night stand.

His expression had sobered significantly though his eyes still maintained that dark and intense look to them.  Trish felt doubt pull sharply at the pit of her stomach. Maybe she had misread all the looks, invented flirtation out of casual remarks. And in a fit of discomfort she tried to defuse the situation by laughing as if it had been a joke and chugging the rest of her drink.

“I’m going to go join those two on the dance floor.” She squeaked, cursing how little control she suddenly had on her voice. She started to slide out of the booth, already bracing herself to keep from wobbling on her heels when he was suddenly standing in front of her.  Trish let her eyes trail upwards as far as they would go before she had to tip her head back to see his face. By then he was easing his way into the seat beside her, urging her to scoot farther across the booth bench towards the wall.

They regarded one another silently from the scant few inches that separated them. Trish was aware of how shaky her breathing was and she closed her eyes to try and collect herself. Damn him and the way his gaze was intense enough to raise the hairs on the back of her neck even when she couldn’t see it.  His breath ghosted across her neck before there was a gentle open mouthed kiss pressed just below her ear.

Trish would deny that she melted, but she wouldn’t argue that she relaxed.


End file.
